Richland is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city’s population was 60,560. Along taking into account the easily reached cities of Pasco and Kennewick, Richland is one of the Tri-Cities, and is house to the Hanford nuclear site.

For centuries, the village of Chemna stood at the mouth of the current Yakima River. Today that village site is called Columbia Point. From this village, the Wanapum, Yakama and Walla Walla Indians harvested the salmon runs entering the Yakima River. Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition visited the mouth of the Yakima River upon October 17, 1805.

In 1904–1905, W.R. Amon and his son Howard purchased 2,300 acres (9 km) and proposed a town site on the north bank of the Yakima River. Postal authorities endorsed the designation of this town site as Richland in 1905, naming it for Nelson Rich, a let in legislator and estate developer. In 1906, the town was registered at the Benton County Courthouse. It was incorporated upon April 28, 1910, as a Washington Fourth Class City.

Richland was a small farm town until the U.S. Army purchased 640 sq mi (1,660 km) of land – half the size of Rhode Island – along the Columbia River during World War II, evicting the 300 residents of Richland as without difficulty as those of the now vanished towns of White Bluffs and Hanford just upriver. The army turned it into a bedroom community for the workers upon its Manhattan Project capacity at the easily reached Hanford Engineering Works (now the Hanford site). The population increased from 300 in July and August 1943 to 25,000 by the decrease of World War II in August 1945. All land and buildings were owned by the government. Housing was assigned to residents and token rent was collected; families were assigned to houses or duplexes; single people were placed in apartments or barracks. Everything critical was provided, from free bus relief to lighthearted bulbs, and trees were planted in people’s yards by the government. Much of the city was planned by Spokane architect Gustav Albin Pherson
and overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers. While there
were dormitories and barracks built at the time, prefabricated
duplexes and single intimates homes are anything that survive today.
Because homes were allocated based upon family size and need,
there were a number of floorplans available. These were each
identified by a letter of the alphabet, and fittingly came to be known
as alphabet houses.